Why does the Psalmist delight so much in God's law? Christopher Ashe gives three reasons: 1) The law in Psalm 119 combines law as command with law as promise; it encompasses the whole of God's gracious revelation... The 'law words' are at bottom 'grace words.' 2) Only Jesus Christ has gladly and freely kept every word of the law. The obedience of this one man is the necessary and sufficient basis for the many to be made righteous (Rom. 5:19). Psalm 119 is supremely an expression of the flawless piety of Jesus on earth. The reason that 'law words' can be 'grace words' is that Jesus has kept the law for us. 3) Only the Spirit of Christ can write the law on a human heart. Under the new covenant, we pray the psalm as those in whom the Spirit has placed the desires and delights of Jesus. (Ashe, 274) Because Jesus is the great singer of Psalm 119, therefore we who are joined to Christ – we who are united to him by his Spirit – may now sing Psalm 119 with the same love for and delight in God's law...

What was the sin of Jeroboam? Jeroboam had made two golden calves and told the people to worship Yahweh through the golden calves at Bethel and Dan. God had said for the people to worship him at Jerusalem, but the kings of Israel feared that the people would return to the house of David, and so they devised their own way to worship. (This is a good reminder that it is not merely who you worship, but also how you worship; God does not take kindly to being worshiped in a manner of our own devising.) And yes, there is a sense in which Jehoram is an improvement over Ahaziah. If a man who is a murderer and a thief has a son who is only a thief, then that is an improvement! But that is not repentance. The house of Omri must die. To be the best king in an apostate dynasty is like saying, "He was the nicest ax-murderer I've ever known!" This is the story of the book of Kings. - Reforming kings are not enough. - Sin is not a problem that can be "reformed" away. - The cyclical pattern of the book of Kings (like that of Judges) demonstrates that there is no hope so long as life continues in this pattern of rebellion and reformation. The only way to deal with sin is through death and resurrection. Reformation says, "we'll do better next time!" But God says to the house of Omri: "there is no next time..."

Psalm 119 is known for being the most orderly and structured Psalm, with each of its 22 stanzas consisting of eight lines, each line beginning with the same Hebrew letter. But Psalm 119 should also be known for the way it talks about how disordered life can be. In fact, the rigidly ordered structure of Psalm 119 reminds us that in the midst of the seeming chaos and disorder that we face, nonetheless, God's word endures. Today we are looking at the third and fourth stanzas of Psalm 119 (gimel and daleth). We could summarize these two stanzas in two questions: Who am I? What am I clinging to?

We have come to the very center of the book of Kings! We have seen over and over in this story that the wages of sin is death. (We see that again tonight!) But in the ascension of Elijah we see the most profound sign of hope in the Old Testament! Why do I say the most profound sign of hope? Moses died here – and was buried by God. But Elijah is take up to heaven! Admittedly – in its own day, it might be taken ambiguously: "Oh great, someone special, like Elijah, gets zapped out of here – but for us ordinary schmucks, we're just stuck in the mess!" But one who is paying attention will notice that this ascension is surrounded by two resurrections: Elijah raises the Sidonian widow's son – and Elisha will raise the Shunamite's son (ch 4). And Elijah and Elisha have a ministry that reminds us of Moses and Joshua. And the point of the whole book is that yes, Israel is going to die – Judah and Jerusalem are going to die – so what hope is there for those who are doomed to death and exile?! Your hope is that God raises the dead! Your hope is that there is one whom God has raised up to heaven! – not just Elijah (who serves here as a type and a shadow) – but our Lord Jesus Christ himself!

When you hear "Psalm 119", what are your first associations? There are probably two things that immediately pop into your mind: 1) it is very long 2) it talks incessantly about the word of God With a little more study a third fact emerges: Psalm 119 is arranged as an acrostic. Each stanza has eight verses. Each of the eight verses in each stanza begins with the same letter of the Hebrew alphabet. That is why most English translations divide the Psalm into 22 stanzas, with the name of each Hebrew letter at the beginning of each stanza: aleph, beth, gimel, daleth, etc. Hebrew has 22 letters, and so the 22 stanzas complete the whole Hebrew language. And quite frankly this third fact explains the other two. The reason why Psalm 119 is so long – and the reason why it talks incessantly about the word of God, is because we should see that all of human language from aleph to taw in Hebrew, and from A to Z in English, should be employed in extolling the glories of the Word of God...

How does Ahab die? One could say that he dies in battle against the Syrians. That's true. But one could also say that Ahab dies by the Word of the LORD. Ahab spent his whole life in rebellion against the Word of Yahweh. The real battle in Ahab's life was not his border skirmishes with the Syrians. The real battle was his unremitting warfare against the God of Israel and his prophets. The basic lesson that we should learn from the life of Ahab is that the Word of the LORD will accomplish his purposes. You can run, you can hide, you can fight and kick against the word of the LORD, but in the end, you will lose...

Do you understand what an insult it is for Ahab to ask Naboth if he can turn his vineyard into a vegetable garden? A vineyard takes years to develop. You carefully tend the vines over several years, and only when they are mature do they provide a bountiful crop. A good vineyard is hard work and difficult to replace, and can last for generations. A vegetable garden, on the other hand, comes and goes. It has no abiding value. Ahab is asking Naboth to give up the vineyard where his fathers had labored in order to turn it into a vegetable garden for Ahab's own personal convenience. Earlier we sang from Psalm 80 about how God had taken a vine from Egypt and planted it in the promised land. Israel is God's vine. He tends it and cares for it. But Ahab is not interested in caring for the vine. He is a boar from the forest, uprooting the vine and casting it out, so that he might have a vegetable garden. He is not thinking about the kingdom of God, he is interested merely in his own convenience...

[Sung Psalm (91) "The God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet." This is a stunning statement – but Paul just says it and moves on. "The God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet." Wait, Paul, don't you mean that God has crushed Satan under Jesus' feet? Or at the very least, God will crush Satan under Jesus' feet, when he returns? No. Paul says, "The God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet." To understand what Paul is saying here, we need to think about what Paul has been saying throughout Romans...

[Sung Psalm: 129] In verses 3-16, then Paul says to "greet" someone sixteen times. It would be easy to skim over this as just another list of names. When John Chrysostom came to the end of the book of Romans, he said: "I think that many even of those who have the appearance of being extremely good men, hasten over this part of the Epistle as superfluous, and having no great weight in it...For because it is a catalogue of names, they think they cannot get any great good from it. Yet the gold founders' people are careful even about the little fragments; while these pass over even such great cakes of gold...For it is possible even from bare names to find a great treasure." Chrysostom was right. There are truly great treasures in this passage!

1 Kings ends with three stories about Ahab that tell of his sins: first in relation to the nations (chapter 20), then in relation to Israel (chapter 21) and finally in relation to the prophet of the LORD and the king of Judah (chapter 22). At the end of chapter 19 we heard that Elijah was commissioned to anoint the three agents of God's judgment against Israel. First, he was to anoint some guy named Hazael as king over Syria. That provided the hint that Syria is going to be an instrument of God's judgment against Israel. And sure enough we already see this at work in the days of Ahab. At the beginning of chapter 20, Ben-Hadad, the king of Syria, is preparing an assault on Israel. Hadad is the name of a Syrian deity – so "ben-Hadad" means effectively "son of god" – and so you find many kings of Syria who go by the title "Ben-Hadad." The Syrian capital was Damascus – in present day Syria. The Assyrians (modern day Iraq) were pushing Syria from the east, and so Ben-Hadad is trying to consolidate his territory in the west. Israel is a convenient target. He has 32 kings in his entourage (In other words 32 independent rulers whose realm may consist of a single city, and have formed a coalition under the ruler of Damascus) Syria has not been a major player in Israel's history before. In 10:29 we heard that Solomon provided the Syrians with horses, and in 15:18 we heard that Asa, the king of Judah, had allied with Ben-Hadad of Damascus against Israel. This was only around 20 years ago, so tensions still remain high between Israel and Syria...